Mental Health and Wellbeing

What is Mental Health and Wellbeing?

Your mental health affects how you feel, think and act. It refers to your emotional, psychological and social wellbeing. Your mental health can change and fluctuate on a daily basis and over time, and can be affected by a range of factors.

Just as it’s important to look after your physical health, the same is true for your mental health. Your state of wellbeing affects how you cope with stress, relate to others, make choices, and play a part in your family, community, workplace and among your friends.

Good mental health among children 

When children have good levels of wellbeing it helps them to:

• Learn and explore the world
• Feel, express and manage positive and negative emotions
• Form and maintain good relationships with others
• Cope with, and manage, change, setbacks and uncertainty
• Develop and thrive.

Children present and will be exposed to a range of factors in their homes and communities that can affect their mental health.

These risks come in many forms and may be the result of:

• the child’s individual characteristics (e.g. their temperament, communication difficulties, learning disability, etc.)
• being exposed to traumatic experiences (e.g. abuse, domestic violence, bullying etc.)
• changes in relationships within families or friends (e.g. divorce, separation, death and loss etc.)
• broader society (e.g. discrimination and poverty etc.).

However, not all children who are exposed to risks will develop mental health difficulties.

The above information is taken from What’s mental health? : Mentally Healthy Schools